Missteps Aside, de Blasio Looks to Focus Anew on Activist Style

Mayor Bill de Blasio, in an interview on Wednesday, emphasized finding ways to bypass Albany.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

He regrets his public-relations headaches, saying he and his team could have done a better job speaking to the public.

He admitted to moments of exhaustion and self-rebuke in a new role whose intensity has at times taken him aback.

He spoke of an abiding faith that the people of New York City will recognize his good intentions, even as he acknowledged the difficulties of coping with Albany and its political culture, which he called illogical, “unknowable,” and a “cipher.”

After 100 days as mayor, Bill de Blasio is sleeping less than six hours a night, stealing downtime when he can with his teenage son, Dante, and, political setbacks aside, pledging to “focus even more deeply” on the grass-roots-activist style he has imported to City Hall.

“George W. Bush was punctual,” Mr. de Blasio said, reclining in an upholstered chair in his corner office at City Hall. “Unfortunately, he left the nation in worse shape than how he found it.”

In a wide-ranging conversation, punctuated by a trip to a nearby pizza parlor to silence the mayoral stomach, Mr. de Blasio portrayed his administration as having kept its pledge to combat inequality, an image he plans to emphasize in a speech at the Cooper Union on Thursday, his 100th day in office.

“I feel very good about where we’ve ended up,” he said, citing, as he frequently has in recent weeks, the state money he secured for prekindergarten classes.

But he allowed that the headlines had not always reflected his own rosy views. He said he had instructed his aides to be clearer and more agile in developing the administration’s message, an effort that has absorbed City Hall in recent weeks.

He also signaled that after a bruising fight in the State Legislature, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo helped kill the signature tax-the-rich proposal of Mr. de Blasio’s campaign, he was shifting to plans that would not require the signoff of lawmakers in the Capitol.

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The 109th mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, took office on Jan. 1, having won the Nov. 5 mayoral election in a landslide. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, succeeded Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who led the city for 12 years.

In a recent survey by The New York Times, NY1 and Siena College, 49 percent of New Yorkers said they approved of Mayor de Blasio's performance so far.

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“We are going to focus on what we can do for our own people, with our own tools,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Privately, City Hall aides have expressed frustration with Mr. Cuomo, a former colleague and ostensible friend of the mayor’s who actively resisted some of Mr. de Blasio’s proposals in Albany.

But pressed repeatedly in the interview about his relationship with the governor, a fellow Democrat, the mayor would only acknowledge “moments of disagreement.”

When Mr. Cuomo’s numerous slights were recited to the mayor — publicly mocking Mr. de Blasio’s “tale of two cities” slogan, and accusing his lobbying team of incompetence, to name only two examples — Mr. de Blasio interrupted, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand.

“Nice try,” the mayor said. “I’m answering your question, and I’m sorry if it doesn’t fit the particular answer you want.” He added, of the governor, “I’m still hopeful we’re going to be able to get a lot done together.”

Mr. de Blasio, who has been criticized on his approach to charter schools and the slow pace of personnel appointments, is looking to move past his fight with Albany and focus on issues like affordable housing and raising workers’ wages.

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He is also emphasizing what he calls his strong connection to New Yorkers. At a shop near City Hall on Wednesday, as he ordered a slice of cheese pizza — and ate it without utensils — Mr. de Blasio was interrupted by well-wishers requesting mayoral selfies, which he happily obliged.

Asked about the tough headlines about him, Mr. de Blasio called it “the sad reality of the world, that good news doesn’t have the same impact.”

But, he added: “I know the people know it. I just know it. I don’t mean this as a romantic notion; I know it from my experience. I spend so much time out with people around this city that I can tell what is registering.”

A New York Times/NY1/Siena College poll this week showed that about half of New Yorkers approved of Mr. de Blasio’s job performance; 31 percent disapproved; and 19 percent said they were undecided or did not know enough about him to make a judgment.

Back in his office, sparsely decorated save for photographs of his daughter, Chiara, as a toddler, and the Mets cap he was given when he threw out the first pitch last week on opening day, Mr. de Blasio admitted to moments of frustration when his administration was not performing as he had hoped.

“I get upset with myself when I don’t feel like I’m at 100 percent,” he said. “I like to do things like stop for a few minutes between meetings, to think about what we just did, reset my thinking, clear my mind.”

“The intensity here makes it really easy to sleep,” he added, noting that he tries to go to bed most days before midnight. “You definitely feel the effect of a long day.”

After spending much of his career as a little-known neighborhood official, Mr. de Blasio said he was still adjusting to the scrutiny that came with his job.

“It’s hard to have privacy, it’s hard to have quiet,” he said. “As human beings, we want some time away from the fray, and it’s very hard to have that in this role.”

The mayor said he had tried roughly once a month “to take as much of a timeout as humanly possible,” like when he and Dante took a father-son excursion to Gettysburg in February. And he has clung onto one pre-City Hall ritual: taking his son to school in the morning.

But even that intimate family moment has had to yield to a new reality. They are now driven to school by a police security detail.

Mr. de Blasio said he had not reached out to his predecessor, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, for advice — or anything else. The two have not spoken since inauguration day.

And as for tardiness? The mayor is known for arriving anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes late to public events.

“I don’t think punctuality should be treated as a false idol; I think it’s the ideal state of affairs,” he said, as a young scheduler lurked nearby. “But the most important thing is to get it right.”

At that, Mr. de Blasio rose from his seat. “There you have it,” he said, indicating that he had other business to attend to.

A version of this article appears in print on April 10, 2014, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Missteps Aside, de Blasio Looks to Focus Anew on Activist Style . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe